Uniko President Seidler on Budget Speech: "Black Day for Science".

Despite repeated calls for help, Austrian universities will receive less than half of the urgently needed additional funding of around 1.2 billion euros for the current "Leistungsvereinbarungsperiode" (2022-24) from the Ministry of Finance - it is now 500 million euros for this period. Sabine Seidler, President of uniko, commented that this was a "black day for science in Austria" and added that this meant that painful cutbacks at the universities were unavoidable: "It is very disappointing that this decision demands massive cuts from us and effectively sets us back by years, if not decades," Seidler underlined.

"We are now faced with the decision of whether we want to use the 500 million to pay energy prices and rents over the next two years - both together amount to around 475 million euros according to our forecasts - or to cover the personnel costs of just over 500 million euros - to do both will not work out," said the President of the Universities Conference. The consequences for young academics would be particularly serious, as Seidler had always warned in advance. "Dark times are dawning for future Nobel Prize winners," Seidler adds "Of all the praise for the importance and significance of scientific research in the past days, not much more remains than lip service and a stale aftertaste."